by Richard Jordan

First Place Winner of The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2023

The poems in The Squannacook at Dawn range from formal verse to free verse to prose poetry and are linked by the speaker’s experiences with water. While many of the poems revolve around fishing, they also explore the speaker’s relationship with the loss of his father, the peace of the natural world, aging, environmental change, and spirituality.

Enjoy a Video of Richard Reading from the Book:

Early Praise for The Squannacook at Dawn:

Each of the twenty poems that comprise The Squannacook at Dawn is so well crafted that the art is all readers experience, the craft a scaffolding that has been removed. Each poem begins with a sense of welcome and closes unpredictably, yet inevitably (i.e., no better ending seems possible). This is high praise, but it’s not my only reason for selecting this manuscript as winner of  The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize for 2023. Read together and in the order they appear in the collection, these twenty poems create what feels like a twenty-first poem: the chapbook itself. The poet has not only written twenty fine poems—none an imitation of another in content or form—but when read straight through, the poems provide readers with a tightly woven and beautiful verbal tapestry, each poem contributing indelibly to the chapbook’s larger context or story.

—Andrea Hollander, contest judge and author of And Now, Nowhere but Here

The art of poetry and the art of fishing come together in these deeply felt, beautifully observed poems. The attentiveness to word and cadence speaks to and for all that the poet notices, be it river currents or dragonflies or ospreys. The earth and the waters are also very much speaking, and Richard Jordan has listened carefully. The scenarios vary as they reflect the amplitude of memorable occasions, but the aim is true in poem after poem—a sense of gratitude to be in the undiminished splendor that is out-of-doors.

—Baron Wormser, author of The History Hotel and former Poet Laureate of Maine

The Squannacook at Dawn is the perfect antidote to an age of human beings anxiously awaiting the next ping of their cell phones. If you’ve ever wondered where fly fishers get their patience and why they don’t get bored, the answer is clear in this vivid, wise collection. It’s in poet Richard Jordan’s dad, an iridescent scale glued to his thumb/ glinting in the April morning sun. These poems, some of them gently formal, others prose poems, dissolve the work week in the natural world’s healing magic: egrets, otters, and of course, rainbow trout. Even Jesus prefers the river to the church here—not just for baptism but for beauty and peace. Jordan is at his best observing the specific: loosestrife, cognac pipe tobacco, Macoun apples, the “jug-o-rum” croak of a bullfrog, mist. Even if your dad never taught you how to tie a fly, you need to spend some time in the shade near the water with a copy of The Squannacook at Dawn.

—Christine Potter, author of Unforgetting and Sheltering in Place.

In The Squannacook at Dawn, Richard Jordan uses close observation of nature, strong memories, and exquisite language to evoke the holiness of fishing. He pulls the reader in with precise details such as in the poem, “Night Fishing with Otters,” where he describes five young otters at the edge of sedge and bulrush and the mother otter with a hefty, flapping catfish plucked/ from the mud. Whether he’s delineating moments spent fishing with his father, witnessing old men talking, or remembering a house that once stood by a creek, he leads the reader to feel at home in nature, to appreciate the fleeting beauty of the world.

—Judy Kaber, author of Renaming the Seasons and former Poet Laureate of Belfast, Maine

About the Author

A Ph.D. mathematician by training and data scientist by vocation, Richard Jordan has been an avid reader of poetry for almost as long as he can remember and has been writing poetry for twenty years. His poems have appeared in many literary journals, including Tar River Poetry, Rattle (finalist for the 2022 Rattle Poetry Prize), Little Patuxent Review, Sugar House Review, New York Quarterly, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Rappahannock Review and Valparaiso Poetry Review. When not doing math or reading & writing poetry, he is most likely at a river or lake somewhere casting away. He resides in Littleton, Massachusetts, a short drive from the Squannacook River.

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by Kirsten Morgan

Second Place Winner of The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2023

Few people understand the unique reality faced by women who are impoverished, underserved and, certainly, unseen. This collection of poetic observations derives from years of volunteer work, both at a homeless clinic and a women’s day shelter, where the author listened to tales stranger than fiction, guided them into written form and became determined to spread these stories through her own poetry. By seeing the human side of inhumane existence, perhaps we can acknowledge and honor women who face fear, anger and degradation while also summoning courage, integrity and hope.

Enjoy a Video of Kirsten Reading from the Book:

Early Praise for Inside Out:

“I admire how fearlessly these poems bear witness to those who have lived lives most of us cannot fathom, and in this they are attempts to beatify—to make sacred—these women. The poems break and mend my heart for a multitude of reasons, but mostly via the small details and images (‘backseats of cars after dark,’ ‘poems…flung onto paper’). In this way, the book is a collection of odes, powerful expressions of love and compassion.”

—Michael Henry, Executive Director, Lighthouse Writers Workshop

“In Inside Out, Kirsten Morgan engages with a practice of accompaniment—that is, she walks alongside vulnerable and unhoused women for whom ‘help was a theory / and stuck a way of life.’ Listening not just to speakers’ narratives but to each woman’s distinct language of survival, Morgan searches ‘for their stories around / the edges.’ In so doing, she finds ‘wonders everywhere.’ This is poetry of witness, always rich with humor and imagination. Many poets do not realize that imagination is a necessary element of empathy. Inside Out conveys an empathy that transforms sorrow to resilience.”

—Elizabeth Robinson, author of Excursive and Thirst & Surfeit,  winner of a 2022 Pushcart Prize

“A powerful work of empathic imagination. In these searing poems of witness and service, Kirsten Morgan gives voice to the voiceless and takes us into a world most would prefer not to see.”

—John Brehm, author of Dharma Talk and No Day at the Beach

“Inside Out is an astounding poetry collection—a startling, superb account of women who’ve experienced homelessness, addiction, domestic violence and other indignities. ‘This life is unkind,’ one poem suggests, ‘to health and can’t / remember ease.’ Told about those who struggle daily on the ‘snapping streets,’ the book never devolves into trite predictability; never sacrifices poetic craft for mere self-expression. These women experience harsh lives, honed sharp by raw pain. Yet their difficult stories never outweigh their deepest truth: they are truth-tellers who’ve rightfully earned their seat at the literary table.”

—Joy Roulier Sawyer, author of Lifeguards

 

About the Author

Kirsten Morgan has taught poetry to children in an independent school, elders in a lifelong learning program, and clients of The Gathering Place, a day shelter for homeless and impoverished women. She is a longtime member of Denver’s Lighthouse Writers Workshop, has published many poems in literary journals and was a finalist for The Birdy Prize from Meadowlark Press. She is the author of Without Skipping a Beat: A Child’s Heart Transplant Journey, editor of One Day, One Night at a Time: Women Write of Poverty, Homelessness and Hope, and co-editor of An Uncertain Age: Poems by Bold Women of a Certain Age. Kirsten hikes, snowshoes, reads incessantly and writes prose and poetry delightedly, in Denver and snuggled into her house deep in the mountains.

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by Carol Barrett

Third Place Winner of The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2023

Reading Wind is a beautiful tribute to a father, written in a daughter’s favorite language—poetry. These poems celebrate the life of the author’s father—a rural physician, accomplished musician, and man who was one with the earth—and take the reader on an imagery-rich journey of mourning and healing.

Enjoy a Video of Carol Reading from the Book:

Early Praise for Reading Wind:

Robin Meyers in a Beecher lecture at Yale in 2013 says, “Poets lead us to the edge of the river to drink without thinking they need to pick us up and throw us in.” This is precisely what Carol Barrett does in Reading Wind. The subject of these compelling poems is her remarkable father, a country doctor, a knowledgeable naturalist, and an accomplished musician. It’s impossible to give an adequate “taste” of the river water that Barrett’s poetry offers to us, but in drinking the words of the collection, we feel as if we know her father and have always known him, yet grieve that we never actually met this unusual man face to face. There is no sappy sentimentality here, no maudlin eulogizing, but what there is in these amazing poems is an opportunity to drink into our souls the words of love for a life well lived.

—William Ellis, Ph.D., Professor of Literature and Howard Payne University President (retired)

From the moment we enter Barrett’s Reading Wind with a poem that elegizes downwinders, we are stunned into awareness of the beauty and fragility of human and natural world, its joys, its potential loss and wreckage. In intimate lyric narratives, she invites us to live within the rich life and passing of her father—devoted physician, musician, and farmer who traded medical expertise for fresh-caught fish. His gooseberry harvest bubbled in her mother’s pies; they bent together over bird books to identify cherished visitors. Even as his physical losses accrue, and they must leave their beloved home, his sense of humor leavens this book, as does blessing: grace reminds us to cherish the gatherings at table, in the garden, in the waiting room. The river knows what comes / comes again, she reminds us: these poems offer guides and grace notes for the joys and losses each of us has and will experience.

—Judith H. Montgomery, author of Passion (Oregon Book Award for Poetry)

Reading Wind immerses readers in a delightful nexus of botany, biography, medicine, and memory. The poems reveal the world of a man whose passions for nature and music complement his professional pursuits, tending to the health of patients in rural Washington. Barrett’s imagery is precise and loving, celebrating her father’s life. In one poem we read of the “luminous microscope / still tracking the enemies / of men and rose leaves,” an image that springs from the context of a rural urology practice in which the doctor occasionally also studies roses from his garden. In others, we learn of his dedication to the local symphony, playing the euphonium and the cello, and his sense of humor, asking elevator riders “if anyone wanted six” in a building of only three floors. Ultimately, the collection turns to the author’s grief after her father’s death and the solace she finds in revisiting the land that he loved.

— Annemarie E. Hamlin, Ph.D., VP for Academic Affairs, Central Oregon Community College

A beautiful journey through a magical life of self and world, family and the family of life. The trill of a bird, the splash of an oar, the words falling from a pen—we hear the music of nature and of a doctor-musician joining in turn. We see doctor-farmer sharing the bounty with patients. These poems bring wonder, expanded consciousness, and also tears. Through his daughter’s brilliant and loving poetry, we intuit in vivid and metaphoric ways, connections that were heretofore invisible. Although we lose this dear doctor-artist-medium at the end, we ourselves are changed—with new awareness, amazement, delight in each other, and in ourselves as part of this dynamic and ceaseless creation.

—Ruth Richards, M.D., Ph.D., Professor Emerita, Saybrook University

Carol Barrett grew up in southwestern Washington near the great natural forces of the Columbia River and the Cascade Mountains. This book, so true to the power and vitality of her home place, is also and perhaps foremost a love letter to a remarkable father. Doctor, farmer, musician, he could “read the wind” of literal weather or the weathers of illness in the patients he treated, who often paid him in produce of the land’s bounty. Like the world as her father was uniquely able to read it, Barrett’s poems are “pages of music,” passing on to us a profound medicine of “leaf, bird, heart, song.”

—Thomas R. Smith, author of Medicine Year

Congratulations to Dr. Carol Barrett for writing this lasting tribute to her late father. In this book of 20 poems, using vivid color and metaphors she paints a portrait of her father as a country doctor, musician, farmer, husband, and father. Using close observation skills and a penetrating voice, she describes his medical practice, love of family and friends, ability to play cellos, trombones, and tubas (and store them in the bathtub), “read the wind”, and harvest crops all surrounded by the flora and fauna of the West. These poems combine art and medicine and portray a country doctor’s life and times. As such, it is an authentic and beautiful historical document of a phase of American medicine and also a loving tribute from an adoring daughter. As a juxtaposition of art and the history of medicine, it belongs in the curriculum of all humanities programs in medical and graduate schools, medical libraries, and hospitals.

—Paulette Mehta, MD, MPH, editor-in-chief, Medicine and Meaning

Full of subtle linguistic texture and splashes of astonishing quotidian beauty, Reading Wind is both a tribute to the poet’s late father and a tributary through places revisited in the aftermath of loss. Each poem in the collection is replete with natural images and reflections of the objects that make up a home as the speaker traverses the interior and exterior realms of heart, soul, touch, and color. Consider the “buds becoming / a quatrain of flowers” in “Blessing” or the “bristly berries / with limestone in the high shade / of persimmon.” In depictions of the outside world, the reader is invited to share in visually provocative elements of the living landscape; against that backdrop, the livingness that inhabits the inside settings is heightened, revitalized. This is a work of discernible unity and personal truth, a journey the reader may begin gladly and finish with a sense of renewal.

—Diane Allerdyce, Professor of Humanities and author of Whatever It Is I Was Giving Up

About the Author

Carol Barrett has taught Poetry and Healing courses for several universities, having earned doctorates in both Clinical Psychology and Creative Writing. She began writing poetry to support widows in counseling. Her book Calling in the Bones won the Snyder Prize from Ashland Poetry Press, following Drawing Lessons from Finishing Line Press. Carol also published creative nonfiction, Pansies, with Sonder Press, the first book in English about the Apostolic Lutheran community for outsiders.

Growing up, Carol played piano and clarinet; poetry became her music after several years as a choreographer and dancer. An NEA Fellow in Poetry, she has published in a wide range of venues, including JAMA, The Women’s Review of Books, Poetry International, Christian Century,  and Poetry Northwest. She also has scholarship in psychology, women’s studies, gerontology, education, and dance and art therapy. She recently began a program at Union Institute & University for students who are ABD, to enable completion of the Ph.D.

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